Earth
by La Editor
Summary: A series of unrelated one-shots about the man and the girl, and everything above the good soil that keeps them together.
1. Children

Children

.

Children are the world.

The world is made of children.

It's an interesting thought, and one she doesn't have to think on too much to find truth in. Rikku likes the rhythm it creates in her head like silver chimes or the ring of metal.

Rikku is a child, too, and she clings to it - adulthood isn't about responsibility or duty, because children have things to do, too. Adulthood is forgetting everything about being alive and living. It's an iron-flavored thought: children experience it yet don't understand it, and adults understand all too well but can't feel it for the life of them.

So she sees the world with rose-tinted glasses, and she is eleven and promises herself that she won't ever forget. Rikku ties a bead to the love-rope that her mama gave to her before she died especially to remind herself.

.

Children are the world.

But the world isn't made of children.

The beat that makes her move is still there, back and forth and side to side in a fast-paced dance, the epitome of Rikku, and she likes the rhythm it creates in her head like golden sunlight and swirling sand, gritty and beautiful like the Al Bhed.

Rikku's still a child, even if she's thirteen now. She doesn't forget and carries the old knot with her everywhere. The world isn't made of children because children don't _forget_ when everybody else does, but she's starting to suspect that maybe 'everybody' does include even them. The world isn't quite like she thought it was, and this is the last time she will visit her cousin for a long, long time - the sting of the angry Yevonite's slap in the city of the damned (_they're all damned, we're not, they are,_ Pops says again and again as he bandages the bruise, _and you just have to keep on believing it, kid_) burns on her cheek, throbbing and red.

But she doesn't lose hold of it, not for a second, and she slips off those glasses to see the world for what it really is.

.

Children are not the world.

The world is made of children.

But children aren't the world. Rikku is fifteen now, smarter, more or less an adult in her own culture - but when no one looks, she dances like a wild child with dandelion fluff in her hair and she loves life hard and fast, finding joy in every day no matter what. The world is made of children and there the beat is, fast like life and fast like Rikku, because she's happiest and most alive when she's moving, running fast like a speed devil with her lungs on fire, sparking up to her eyes. She likes the rhythm that sounds like adrenaline with the starry night sky and the sound of the sea, crashing against rubble and dreams of places long since dead.

The world_ is_ made of children because everybody is young compared to the world, something she didn't quite realize before. But children are not the world because they don't matter to anybody anymore, and she may be the only child left.

That's a lonely thought, and she is fifteen so she tries to shrug it off but only feels better after running straight across Bikanel Island to dive into the oasis of mirages and make-believe.

.

Children are the world.

The world is made of children.

The knot is five years old: a little ratty, a little beat up, but nice to look at. The bead from her mama's hair is the prettiest, and Rikku sits at Home on the beach – a far stretch from the oasis, and the magic is different in both places – and looks out to sea, twining that beat piece of love rope through her fingers.

Rikku is almost-sixteen and she wonders about a boy whom she had met for a day, a friend she had lost. It's unfair because it's always exciting to meet someone new, almost like earning a clean slate to make up for the dozens she's lost. Which is like poking her fingers in their eyes, she knows. Nobody can make up for everybody. That makes sense. Because recently, even more recently, she lost a hundred friends. Gone like little pyreflies from broken bottles, quick out like a light, and she wasn't even there to help them, and she wasn't there, shewasnt—

That hurts, too. She dumbly wishes that the boy hadn't fallen into the sea and probably been eaten by Sin like a sardine sandwich.

It's still unfair, and she wants to throw the knot into the sea and thinks on it hard, thinks how it would feel - like a release or a prison, and would she go sprinting after it? - how she would scream out that all she would want was for Sin to find it and _choke _on it, choke to death and then she could prove to all those stupid people who shove away their summoners like sacrifices that _anybody_ could do it.

But anybody can't do it and she can't let it go, and the glowing sun bears down on her hard. She's used to it, because it is a part of her, woven into her bones and hair and skin like a love knot.

And then she realizes how stupid she is.

"I forgot," Rikku shouts. Her palms got sweaty and her grip loosened to the point that she almost fell off. She almost forgot.

_She is still a child_. She can't let that _go_, because of all the things in the spiral of death that is Spira, that is the one thing that may be the most important.

Rikku is five years old again and she cries, snot-nosed and red-faced. She's not very sentimental, but in a way, it means the world to her. She doesn't always understand it herself, but it keeps her going. It makes her alive. It makes her remember life when - when so many other people just -

So she just cries now, because it's easier this way. When the sun sinks low in the gold-orange sky and her eyes are pink and her nose is red, she loosens one of her braids and pulls the bead off, knotting it into her rope. It feels warm in her palm.

"Help me grow," Rikku says to nobody. Maybe the knot overhears her, though, because when she's walking back Home, the rhythm comes back to her head, and what's funny is that she didn't even realize it was gone in the first place.

.

And-

She's two days off sixteen when she joins a doomsday march of seven.

Rikku spends more time focusing on the present and less time climbing trees. She doesn't forget, but she isn't reminded as often. There are days she doesn't know where she shoved her little knotted rope away, and she's scared until she finds it stuffed away in her shoes, in her shirt, in her big pockets.

She likes the rhythm that's still in her head anyway and she can be happy, maybe because a death march is just the time to cut loose like they'll live forever. She won't ignore it, but Rikku steadfastly refuses to let it take her over life the rest of them. Of anything, she knows that she has to live, because what else could she possibly do? She loves the beat like bongos and drums and rainmakers, a wild harmony beating through her body that makes her want to jump off a cliff for the rush.

Why not?

She cries out that she'll scout out ahead and meet the rest of them at the bottom of the cliff - she runs off and just up ahead, out of sight, she twirls around leaps. She lands on her feet, shrieking with laughter, walking on water for a split second before the ground shatters and vivid blue ocean swirls above her head.

The road to Guadosalam is a long one, and she dries off in the sunlight until her party catches up with her. They continue on, and later, Lulu is worried: "why did you do that?"

Rikku twists the rope through her fingers and says it made her feel alive. Wakka ruffles her hair and calls her crazy as he passes them, but Lulu's eyes hesitate on Rikku, uncertain.

She watches her mog doll before she glances curiously at Rikku and back, and slowly, she smiles.

Tidus catches her eye and Rikku only gives a good-natured shrug, and that's all that needs to be said. Of anyone, maybe Tidus understands the most, because he understands with a wordless smile and jogs ahead to walk with her aunt's little girl. He's neat like that, she knows, and it's funny in a morbid way that these things can feel so lighthearted while they're waiting for Yuna's sand clock to stop.

Despite the sun and the song, Rikku is thinking and thinking hard because time really is running out for her cousin.

And it-

So sweet and so gentle and so young, Yuna loves like Rikku does but keeps it to herself, Rikku thinks. But more than anyone Yuna lives to enjoy the moment, even the thunder and the lightening. The summoner takes it in like breathing. There are still children. (And later Rikku murmurs this into Yuna's hair inside the agency as they huddle together, both five years old again and little girls allowing themselves to be afraid of the world for just this once.)

When they march on to the Macalania Woods - unearthly and ethereal as the air is silk through her fingers - maybe everyone is a bit of a kid again in the hush and the fairy lights. Rikku likes the rhythm that strums through her head, peaceful like rain tapping pitter-patter on a pond.

The blue butterflies bring fortune, the butterfly woman says softly, but the red ones bring bad luck.

That's unfair to the red ones, because Rikku has never been one to be superstitious and she watches the scarlet butterfly as it watches her until she cups it in her open hands. Its wings flap slow, like feather down, and it kisses her nose before fluttering away. The air is fresh.

"The red butterflies are said to bring ill fortune," a voice tells her, but Rikku says that the red ones are the nicest.

And Auron asks why she thinks she's just a child, and the world is children.

Because some people forget, but they're children, too, she says, and that's that.

And it really is.

.

Children are the world, and the world is made of children.

The group of people (and that is all they are, in the end) reach Mount Gagazet too soon. The hush of rock and snow in mighty glory, tall ahead of them like a giant, strings a pulse through Rikku's head that sounds like proud warriors and broken promises.

Rikku knows she will add more beads to the knot. One for every time she forgets and then finds it again.

She hopes, stupidly and wisely, that she'll never stop adding beads.

There are three beads on her knot, and she tells herself there won't be another one, but it's getting harder as they keep going and the grunge grows bolder and the light gets weaker. She breathes life into it by dancing in the snow and holding Yuna's hand and jumping on Wakka's back, but it's getting harder. She moves to the rhythm with a hoarse, worried voice.

When it really does feel farther away, she thinks of home on Bikanel, of diving into the oasis and the mirages she once would laugh with as the sun dried her skin and the grit turned her into a sand-girl. Sometimes these thoughts hurt the most but keep her going.

Summoners are often lost here, Lulu murmurs.

Maybe in more ways than one, which is even worse, Rikku thinks. Her knot digs into her hip almost painfully from where she jammed it into her shorts earlier.

The storm roars and bites and shrieks, sending howls whirlwind across the rocky crevices while the emptiness of the fiends' pinprick eyes curdle Rikku's stomach in the frost. The mountain is a force of nature that is not calm, does not rest, does not love - it's bitter and has a spirit cold as the stone that covers it. Some of them aren't prepared for it, and she's not afraid to admit how out of her comfort zone she is, her shorts too short, her shirt too thin, her neck too bare.

No matter how unforgiving the mountain is, it is Kimahri's mountain, and he understands it in a way Rikku knows Bikanel's unrelenting sand and sun, harsh in the heat and grit she is in love with. He says that it's time to stop because the storm is getting worse, and his voice rings across the wind and the snow that make _him_ alive, she realizes.

"Let's stop over here!" Tidus calls out. He leads the way to a low, icy cave - beaten and bruised, they crawl in to lick their wounds. They're tired, but there's no giving up. Not after coming this far, which is a cruel thing as her cousin's sand starts turning to dust before Rikku's very eyes. She sits at the front of the cave, away from the tiredness and the sleep.

It's cold, she thinks, and a wicked chill eats into her.

The rustle of heavy, warm cloth makes its way to sit beside her to counter it. Auron lays his sword on the ground and rests with one knee drawn and the other leg sprawled in front of him. They've reached an understanding where Auron isn't a legendary guardian or an old man and Rikku isn't an Al Bhed or a stupid girl. They're only them.

Right now, they're only tired.

They're all tired, and some of them have forgotten, if they ever knew at all. His breath sends puffs through the air.

"Why are you a child?"

The question doesn't register at first until the dig in her hip bone wakes Rikku up again.

"Because I remember what everybody else forgets." Rikku finds she likes the rhythm inside her head that sounds like pyreflies floating and whispers of the fayth. He tilts his head, wooden-brown eye hidden by his sunglasses.

"It's not really about children at all, when it comes down bare bone to it. It's their eyes, it's - I just remember when I laugh. And Yuna remembers when she just stops and takes in everything, y'know? And everyone else forgets."

He looks at her and his eyebrows raise as his mouth untightens. He rubs his eyes with one hand, the other resting inside his red coat, and she thinks maybe he can understand.

"You don't look like a child," he murmurs, and he is so tired, she can tell. But there's something else there, too. She takes a chance and stretches out on a proverbial limb, hazy mind full of softly fluttering red wings, and tells him,

"You do."

He is silent, good eye closed, until his lips quirk. He chuckles wryly, and it's a dry, raspy sound.

"I've never tried," he says mirthlessly.

Rikku stares at him until he shifts with a sigh deep enough to pop his lungs out. Sighing herself, Rikku moves to crouch in front of him, placing her small palms on his cold cheeks very seriously. Her eyebrows are pulled firm and he watches her, surprised.

"You forgot." She punches his shoulder and twists a blue bead off a sun-dyed yellow braid along with the knot from her shorts, the chocobo feather from her hair falling to the ground. She holds up the bead between them and clutches the rope.

"One," she says, "for every time I forget, because I remember. _You can remember_. It never had to be about Spira's spiral of death."

"Then what is it about?"

"You decide."

His eye snaps to her. She wonders if a lightning bolt crashed into his head as he stares until he hesitantly reaches up, and she places it in his big gloved hand. He holds it in front of his good eye, pulling his glasses and then his glove off to feel the glass between his fingers. His laugh is hoarse.

"I feel like I'm twenty again," he says, rubbing his eyes again and leaning his head back against the cavern wall. He asks her to, and she links the little bead to the chain on his shoulder guard, comfortable on its own small knot with her feather.

"It's a good thing." Rikku sidles back to rest her head against his big arm and heavy coat, freezing as warmth whirls inside her chest and head. The rhythm rocks her to sleep like a lullaby as the man next to her breathes deeply.

.

Children are the world.

The world is made of children.

It's a thought she doesn't have to think on too much to find truth in as they make their way to Zanarkand, beautiful city of the dead. Rikku likes the rhythm it creates in her head like silver chimes or the ring of metal.

They're on their way, and that's scary. They are only people in the end, tired but not beat, and they start to settle for the evening as twilight begins to stretch over the expanse of gold sky above their heads.

"Look!"

The cliff is inviting and reaches to the sun. She smiles before twisting around and running right off the edge, whooping, landing with a crash of sea and a rush of life to her veins. Surfacing, she calls out and he stands on the edge, looking down, wondering if he should jump.

He steps.


	2. Parallels

_Parallels_

_*  
_

Try this—

I always thought – no, okay, here. This is a story: in my time digging up and dusting off and hunting spheres, spheres, spheres, I've only ever found two spheres from Zanarkand.

They're tricky to find, damn near impossible, and they're unique. My pops said they were called films, and they were made to tell a story about fake people and a fake reality, and it kind of boggled my mind at first until I really wrapped my head around the idea, like a living story book.

So, the first sphere was this amazing kick-ass video about this guy who had to go to this temple to save the world – okay, okay, but that one isn't really important. I mean, I love adventure as much as the next treasure-hunter - it'd be kind of an oxymoron to _not_ love adventure if you're a treasure-hunter, because that's the entirety of it, really, and boy do I ever love it - and that sphere is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen this side of Spira, but what I've been thinking about recently is the second Zanarkand sphere I saw.

This sphere focused more on regular life. A romance story.

I've never been one for that kind of story.

And, in being honest the way a gal has to, I'm not sure if that fits anywhere into the story I'm weaving for me. Sometimes I think I want a bunch of children of my own, a laughing family, always loving. Sometimes I think I'd rather shoot my own foot and slit my own throat rather than bear a sprog of my own.

What I do always know is what I already feel – deep in my bones and hair roots and the swirls of my eyes, feel that my path is that of an adventurer. A traveler. A thief, a leader. Call it what you will, but I'll call it Rikku.

It's my own path. That's it.

I'm thinking about this because I'm twirling the little girl's hair around my fingers shimmer-glimmer steady like silk. I'm thinking about this because in the story of the second sphere, one of the people walked out of the other's life and never came back.

Maybe it pushed along me being afraid of that. I'm not - I don't really know. I couldn't tell you if I tried. But the thought of someone walking out terrifies me, because then you'd be alone, and if you're alone in the first place, then nothing - and that's a stupid way to think.

It's a stupid way to think, isn't it?

When I saw this sphere, though, this old rotting thing covered in dust and algae and rust from the dead city under the water, the video itself clean as the day it was made, the one thing that I remember about it is that the man walked away, and the woman watched.

I hated that movie.

"Grumple bumple buzzle 'n rumple."

The hammock swings left, the hammock swings right, and I ground my foot so it doesn't swing right over. I shift a little, making sure I've still got her tight. It's like she's made of glass, fragile and sticky like a baby, four years old with Tidus's eyes and Yuna's hair. I'm real careful with her, sleeping on my side, curled up and mumbling sing-song.

Those ones are different, by the way. Tidus and Yunie. They'll always be here for each other. Yuna and her Not-So Imaginary Friend. They're each others' somebodies, if that makes sense. It's sweet like honey and Moonflow water, steady as the sun.

God. Such a stupid way to think.

Don't tell anybody, but – and I mean nobody – but I did find somebody, once. It feels like a really, really long time ago. It kind of was.

I was fifteen-barely-sixteen, I was immature, I was childish. I was all laughter and smiles, but that's not just it, that's not just it at all, because just like anybody else there are two sides to the coin and I had seen more death than Yuna or Tidus or Wakka by then. I had been younger but I had cried more and hated more and been hated more. So I was mature in other ways, maybe.

It was a long time ago, but I did find somebody, once. The man in the red coat.

We were going to celebrate his thirty-sixth birthday, you know. As a surprise right after we beat Sin, before we - before we knew. Before we knew.

"Rumple-snatcher," I say in response. She squirms and wiggles, four-years-old and wonderful. "Snatch the dreams up in a basket, kiddo."

I think she does. She wiggles again and turns into me and breathes in, breathes out, baby breath fresh.

I think I just had a lot of respect for him. And that's healthy. I admired him to a point, on a level of camaraderie, but I think I really appreciated the fact that he saw me as an adult. I wasn't the comic relief for once because Tidus took that, and that was really nice, but to a lot of the others I was still just a child. Auron saw both sides of the Rikku coin and he treated me accordingly.

But Kimahri saw that, too. So it wasn't just that.

I don't know. _I don't know_. Sometimes I don't know how it went down, sometimes I try not to remember it at all like it was just a silly girlish dream or a baby-nightmare. It's just there, like this rotting egg inside your head, and sometimes you're not sure if it's really rotting or if it's just waiting to hatch, and sometimes you just sit there with your hands ghost-close around it and maybe it isn't even an egg at all, just something sitting there, but you can smell it and it's impossible to distinguish if it's a fragrance or a stench or -

Sometimes it isn't in your head at all but it's just this thing in your chest like a lump.

Sometimes I stress myself out just thinking too hard.

I really enjoyed being me. And that was it, and that wasn't it at all.

(I met a woman, once, who didn't notice the swirl in my eyes. She told me that she had been searching for a place where nobody had ever heard of Sin, but was ready to give up now, and… I want her to find that. She was nice. That's all.)

But sometimes I wasn't me.

Because I don't think you're ever you around that one person, when – and – but you are, but sometimes you try not to be, does that make sense? Does it even matter? I was so surprised and so amazed that it did and it didn't, and my mind hits back to a nightmare-dream-twilight zone of quiet night and earth and big hands in hair, small hands against stubble, sweet and tired and scared and something wonderful between mouths.

And I'm not saying that's love.

But I'm not saying that it isn't, either.

To me, love is strong friendship, love is joy and happiness and being mumpish and down when something hurts what you love (mumpish is a word, _Buddy told me so_ – well, that can actually mean it might not be a word. Nevermind). But I don't like saying 'in love,' because how can somebody be in love? That's stupid. Love is an emotion. It would sound just as equally ridiculous to say, 'I'm in happy.' I'm happy. I'm sad. I love. But I don't do 'in love.'

When I hear that, I can't help but think that means in love with the idea of love. And that isn't love, not really.

Talk about your tongue twisters.

But I won't say that there wasn't anything there, because there was. I found someone that made me feel like a piece to a whole, like I was really a puzzle piece called Rikku that fit into a jigsaw of two.

Maybe we were just lonely.

Because the world is lonely and we were no exception, no exception at all. And I knew he was dead and he knew he was dead, but it was alright. It was alright then.

He felt bad later, I know, because all he could say before he went was I'm sorry, which are some pretty sucky last words to the last girl you kissed and the last time you kissed her, I think.

But I won't say that there wasn't anything there, because there was. I found someone that made me spin and light up like a firework, never the dud I thought I always was.

Maybe we were just sad.

Because back then everything and everybody was sad and we were no exception, no exception at all. But he wasn't so sorry, because the next time I dragged myself into a travel agency, Rin smiled an unhappy smile and told me that a huge sword was found in the back with my name on it.

So maybe it wasn't just sadness and loneliness. Maybe it wasn't just that.

"Good nap," she says and she yawns big and wide, tiny and glass. She rolls off the hammock onto the sand before I can catch her but she laughs.

"Was it?" I step off myself and flop down into the sand next to her and she tugs at my hair.

"Yes," and that's that. She makes me smile, she is something wonderful that I want to swallow whole sometimes, melt into her, a strange mixture of aunt-niece filled with light and love and joy.

"I want to catch butterflies."

"You want to catch butterflies?"

"That's what I said!"

"Then let's catch butterflies."

When Tidus came back, I was… I was happy. He's my friend, like a brother. I was - I'm selfish, I'm selfish, I tried not to think it but I _did_, I wondered why he could come back if Auron couldn't because I'm so selfish, but it passed. It did, and I let it go and I felt better.

There are reasons, I know. Auron didn't live a full life – far from it – but he was tired. He needed rest.

But Tidus wasn't ready. He was an imaginary friend, but he was a loud one and needed to live and I think that, back then, he could appreciate living more than anybody. Now, too, especially now. I think like him. It's like a train of good thoughts and feelings, like a happiness like the Besaid sun or Bikanel's oasis or the Moonflow's lilies, the Macalania Forest's crystals and ponds.

I just - they wanted me to babysit, so here I am, and you just sit there with a gal like this one and you get to thinking, y'know? I'm just thinking right now.

Her grubby little hand in mine is small, like I could just inhale it and would never even notice. It's late afternoon, Besaid sun forgiving like the Bikanel sun never was, growing low on the horizon and nature at her best. The girl-child calls me slow and I swoop down to scoop her onto my back, laughing, running all the way to the field near the ocean, legs and heart pumping and breathing fresh and breezy ocean water air to the greenest grass this side of Spira, where the butterflies live. I try to set her down gently – gently, gently, a glass girl, I always think – but we both fall to the ground anyway in a laughing, puffing mess, a jumble of skin and hair and smiles.

I'm a running girl, if that makes any sense.

That's what my Pops has said for as long as I can remember, since I took my first steps on the sand, learned how to send it up in a flurry with motorboat legs, and I've never stopped since. I slowed down when I was fifteen-going-on-sixteen and for almost a year after, I forgot how to start back up again, bad posture and tired feet and a hole in my chest.

When I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen, I realized I had never been to the Farplane and my bad posture and tired feet and hole-y chest told me to shoot there with some sort of craziness I never had before and don't think I ever will again. Sometimes I'm glad, and sometimes I miss that.

I told my dad and brother I'd be gone, and I took off from where our airship landed just off of Macalania at a run.

I couldn't walk – I had to run, because all my head could see was sunglasses and graying hair and red coats and swords, my own strapped to my back even if I could barely use it. Running.

I hit the Thunder Plains. There they were ahead of me, angry and storming and raging like always, a constant tantrum that never ends. I was so afraid, I remember, but I was still running and could see them in the distance, and I saw – him – there – in my head, smelled the rain and you know what I did?

I kept running. I ran straight through, all the way, never slowing down for a second, because I'm strong and I've run straight across Bikanel Island just to prove I could, so I kept going, faster and faster and then the thunder, and the thunder, everywhere but I wouldn't stop and I tried not to think about the last time I was there but at the same time could only think about that, and the thunder andthethunderandthe—

But I kept running, and I never stopped. Not once. I jumped and skipped and sprinted, but never slowed down to a walk because walking is where the doubts come in, and running set my lungs on fire but the moisture and the rain in the air eased it all and I realized that the storm was just a child, just a child crying and crying and I hurdled straight into the passage to Guadosalam, collapsing on the ground in a heaving, soaked mess of Rikku.

But I did it. I went straight across, and I felt something swell up in my chest, real big and up my throat so I couldn't speak; I swallowed it back down, but I felt so warm. I just stayed there for a while, listening to the storm outside, feeling the damp earth on my cheek and under my fingers, breathing.

I walked to the Farplane.

I walked up the steps, slow, echoing, looking around, and I stopped where me and Auron had plunked down for a while. It was an interesting spot, an interesting story behind it, a starting point at the ending point, because it takes time to grow anything and this was no exception.

Something went _plop_ down my back onto my thigh. I looked down in surprise and when I had landed in the cavern of Guadosalam, the edge of my borrowed sword had cut into my upper arm a little and I hadn't even felt it, but it was bleeding freely and the blood was such a stark scarlet contrast to the drab colors around me.

_Auron's sword_ cut me. Auron's sword _cut_ me. Auron's sword cut _me_.

And you know what I did?

I laughed.

I'm still not sure why it hit me so powerfully at that moment, and the meaning faded over time so I'm not sure anymore, but even now, sprawling on the ground and looking up at the late pink and orange afternoon sky with the ocean in front of me, I can still feel it in my chest.

And it made me laugh.

So I looked at the Farplane for a good long moment, laughing fully and honestly and truly happily, and then I flipped it off and ran away.

I'm laughing now, too, and laughter is really the best medicine because I always feel better.

After that, I lived. I breathed and I smiled and I cried and I shouted and I laughed, and I lived. That was a release for me.

(Tell you a secret. I picked the scab off again and again until it scarred because that's my favorite part of me, and I feel better knowing it's there.)

And whenever I feel real down, whenever I'm feeling like I'm forgetting or he won't leave me alone, that's what I do. I drop everything and I run, all the way to somewhere and anywhere, because we had been all over the world. I was in Luca when I went running to the Omega Ruins, I was in the Calm Lands when I went running and skidded to a stop in Zanarkand, heaving and panting and smiling.

I'm getting better, though. I'm not letting it kill me on the inside. And I don't think about him everyday. That used to scare me, terrify me because if I didn't, I was so afraid of losing him, because my memories are the most precious things I have, and nobody can take them away from me except me.

But I know now that just because I don't think, 'huh, that red flower reminds me of Auron's coat,' everyday doesn't mean I'm losing him. I'm living. He would have wanted that.

Backtrack, erase that. He wants that. He's somewhere else, now, but if there is one thing that's controversial among the Al Bhed, it's whether there is some form of consciousness after death. And I like to think there is.

I wasn't left behind. I'm the farthest thing from it, because he had to walk away but I didn't stop, I kept walking, too, on a parallel path to him, always in sight. I'm moving on, and he is a person I'll always be close to.

And as we walk I can move closer, so that our paths will meet again, someday.

"Auntie," she whispers and there aren't any butterflies but there are glowing dots and for a moment my brain stupidly thinks 'pyreflies,' but these are a million times better.

"Fireflies," I tell her and she smiles and cups one in her hands, small and fragile and her smile is like the little light is sharing a secret with her and a bubble of laughter erupts gently from her throat, the soft yellow light illuminating her face in the dying sunlight. The firefly floats lazily from her hands and lands on her nose in a kiss before taking flight again.

We try to catch fireflies in our open hands, laughing openly and spinning and twirling in the magic – because it's there, and we know it – and the moon is shining like starlight, and it is warm and everything is good.

I open my mouth to let out that pyrefly and let it all go even if it's still part of me, too, and I'm laughing again.

I'll meet up with him later, that's all.

Life is good.

*

* * *

*

In a fit of something-vaguely-resembling OCD, I've decided to bundle all of my Aurikku stories together all nice and neat-like in a pile. Ever unsatisfied with Everything I Have Ever Written Ever, it has also given me to opportunity to rewrite parts of both Parallels and Children and clean them up to a point where I'm not horribly embarrassed that it ever vomited out of my fingertips at the ripe young age of this-sounds-like-a-five-year-old-wrote-it. I'm much happier with both now, and I hope you all enjoy them, too - this will be an ongoing series of unrelated oneshots, so keep your eyes open and I'm sure I'll add more before you all turn to skeletons at your computers. (Probably.)

La


	3. Maybe

what might have been

*

The crickets hum.

The fire crackles, and they sit close to it as the only two still awake. It warms weary bones because these bones have been so cold lately. Plainly, Rikku doesn't have enough meat on her, and Auron sometimes has to rub his limbs to stop the numbness from escalating to rigor mortis. Being Unsent is not as kind to him here as once in Zanarkand.

The camp is set up along the bank, the ship too far to return to for the night. The trees whisper, black shapes against the inky sky, and the water slowly ripples. The crickets hum.

"Back at the Moonflow," she says. In the spirit of camaraderie, her mouth moves often and quickly. In the times Auron finds himself alone with her, he ceases to mind. "Always pretty."

He observes that she has her back to it and probably doesn't mean that if she isn't watching it, and tells her as much. Rikku scrunches her nose at him and scoots slightly back from the fire. The wind is favorably warm, but the fire still crackles because she understands. Sometimes at night, when everyone else is asleep, she creeps over to him and rubs his arms until her own hands burn from friction. It's been more often, lately.

"I like it and I don't," she says conversationally, picking at grass and throwing it in the flames. It makes her nostalgic. It isn't welcome right now. Auron dips his head.

This journey is full of nostalgia and memories, even for someone as young as Rikku. He prods for elaboration unconcernedly, one arm slung inside his battered coat and the other resting against his drawn leg. Rikku stretches her arms and throws the grass she was holding to the wind.

The pyreflies reflect from the water. She turns half-way, a small figure against the unusually bright night, and she stares at it from her peripheral view.

"It bounces everywhere and it turns me upside down." Rikku fiddles with her weapon before pushing it aside.

"Not always about just what I've lost. About what I might've had – not in the way that I wanted it, either. I mean – just – let's say I was seven and I learned how to speak Hypello instead of working on my pops's ship. I wouldn't be here because I wouldn't be strong enough to be any kind of guardian. I'd be working the shoopuf system or something. What if I had pointed out that Sin would be stronger than any ray we made, no matter how big we build it? Or let's say I - what if I had captured Yuna right off the bat, would she be here anyway? Would I? I start thinking and I get mixed up sometimes."

The water has that effect, he concedes. They lapse into silence like the waves going in and out, back and forth. Auron tells her that he almost quit being a monk to join a traveling group of musicians. He could play something, once. Rikku hasn't heard of the instrument and doesn't contemplate.

She asks why he didn't instead. He doesn't know. Auron says duty, but he wonders if he just hadn't known how to follow them. The water hushes, the wind swirls, the crickets hum.

"I was supposed to be married, you know," Rikku breaks the quiet again, her voice very naked, and she smiles lopsidedly. This startles him.

"I'm not so young." She spreads her hands, which are contrarily very young. "A while back. Before the Guado went full-time Yevonite, my pops wanted to ally with them. I don't blame him, he just - it was the idea of somebody with their own brain, you know? I don't blame him. I was… I was maybe nine. I was a kid then, yeah. Seymour was around twenty."

Auron pulls up his jug for a gulp to swallow down the concept with.

"I know things are maybe different in Bevelle. They can afford waiting, probably. Zanarkand probably could, too. The rest of the world is pretty different." Rikku cuts what Auron thought he knew out of his brain, maybe to show that he really doesn't know so much. "It was supposed to be… probably the minute I turned fifteen. I guess. I'm not really sure when it fell out. I remember running into his room and ripping up his robes when we visited." She grins, but avoids looking at him.

He asks if she wondered what it would've been like.

"Sometimes." She pokes at the dying firewood with the toe of her boot. "I hated – I hate him. He taunts me with it. What a bastard child it would have been, and I agree. But I wonder. Things sure would've been easier."

Auron shifts quietly.

"I was afraid," he offers. Rikku picks over the rocks and dying flame to sit beside him.

"I don't like the Moonflow sometimes," is her response. What is right now and what can be glows at them from the water.

"Sometimes," he says, and that is that as she wriggles into his coat to rub his arms, and they try not to think in that context for themselves.

The crickets hum.

*


End file.
